December 12, 2018

The 70th Anniversary of the Birth of the Constitution of the Earth

#Emaddedin_Baghi
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 10, 1948, which was subsequently signed by all the governments, has become the #constitution_of_the_inhabitants_of_the_planet, because it is the only document on which there is a global consensus. The international Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which has been ratified by United Nations Member States, including Iran, stipulates in Articles 2-5, especially the explicit phrase of Article 2, paragraph 2, and requires States Parties to adopt the principles contained in the Charter of Fundamental Rights in their fundamental as well as ordinary laws, and these principles shall be regarded as the domestic laws of the countries. But unfortunately, we never see any reference to the documents by the legislative , judicial or executive bodies or even by many lawyers, political and party activists.
We celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights while we are still at the very beginning of our pathway and we are still trying to prove that "all are human beings", and they are equal in their human rights with every faith, race, religion, belief and gender. And even criminals are protected by their rights and should only be denied their freedom to avoid harming the community. From an epistemological point of view, we are still trying to prove that human rights are not conspiracy, it's not against ethics and is rooted in rituals, religions and human cultures. It is a human achievement which is not at war with religion at all and is not ideological by any means. Worse, we are trying to learn the alphabet of human rights. We celebrate the 70th anniversary of the deceleration while we should have had respected the document upon undersigning which we have undertaken to treat it and adopt it as our domestic laws.
We, as human rights activists, have even given up more than that and say, " OK, let's ignore the deceleration and the covenants. Let's execute the very current laws, the third chapter of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the very "Criminal Procedure", the very "Law on Respect for Legitimate Freedoms and Citizenship Rights", the very"Law of Release and Free Access to Information" and the very defective law of " Political Crime", all of which have been passed in the parliament and confirmed by the Guardian Council. Let's execute the rational, legal and religious principle of narrow interpretation of the law in favor of the defendant; rather than enforce the law strictly, whenever it was in the interest of the power, with the broad interpretation of the law for the benefit of the power, but implement it restrictively, whenever the law is in favor of the citizens.
At a time when the world goes a long way towards decriminalizing the rules and limits the scope of crimes and punishments in most countries to the real crimes and, a month ago, in Ireland, they even removed the offense of insulting the sanctity from the law, and in some countries, prisons are closing, but in Iran, according to judicial authorities, there are 15 million cases annually, if at least two parties are in every case, half of the population is involved in judicial cases.
In the course of the previous administration (the Ayatollah Shahroudi era), steps were taken to decriminalize the law and it was anticipated that in the long run 3500 crimes in the law would be reduced to 800, but the very process of reducing criminalizing in the laws was stopped.
There is no hope for progress and desirable improvement until there is not a safe environment for legal and expert critique of all the orders and judgments and also until there is no serious critique of our human rights record in the press and the domestic media.
If, in the seventieth year of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, these conditions are provided by the authorities and the judiciary, it will be a real and practical celebration and, o
f course, an admirable act. Such an act shall be for the implementation of assignments under article 210 of the fifth development plan law for the government to "stop the issuance of human rights resolutions against Iran" through the use of experts to enhance the status and role of the Islamic Republic and the extension of the justice discourse, otherwise, whatever is said, shall be nothing except the expression of the aspiration and continuation of the former procedures.
#Constitution_of_the_Earth #Emad_baghi #human_rights
Sazandegi news paper,No 242 Dec 12, 2018 p:1-2